Media Medium
2 February 2001

LOADED

Loaded Question

As lads' mag Loaded gets a new editor and prepares to revamp,
can it reinvent itself for a new decade?

As lad's mag Loaded gets a new editor and prepares to revamp,
can it reinvent itself for a new decade? The monthly is a ballsy
Taurus Bull (cover-dated May 1 1994), with an opposition of the
Sun to over-the-top Jupiter in the sex and money signs of Taurus
and Scorpio. The Moon, symbol of women, is placed next to
outrageous Uranus, targeting the mag defiantly against New Nappy
Man and marking the end of political correctness. Loaded Man is
shown by macho Mars in Aries, packed with testosterone but
isolated and oddly disconnected from all the other planets in the
horoscope. Full of balls, he's always coming but doesn't know
where he's going.

Founder James Brown and his gang caught the nineties mood and
had a runaway success, but the unsustainable rebel stance has
gone limp, and Brown now thinks that the men's magazine sector,
including Loaded, has become "stale" and "embarrassing".

New editor Keith Kendrick is a forceful Aquarian (January 30
1964), full of ideas, principles and prejudices, and with a
strong Mars himself, he loves a fight. He has great connections
with the mag and his crusading, visionary Jupiter on its Mars
allows him to give Loaded Man a purpose in life, beyond bonking.
He was worth the year-long wait to find a new editor, and given a
big advertising campaign, he'll soon get Loaded talked about
again.

But there is a downside shown in an uncanny parallel between
the two horoscopes. Both Kendrick and Loaded get hit this coming
year by Mercury's progressed opposition to Pluto. Mercury is the
communications planet, and Pluto symbolises the underworld, the
realm of Hades. In mythology, he is a god of rape and hidden
desire and represents the shadow side of man's bestial instincts.
According to astrologer Howard Sasportas, this Mercury-Pluto
combination stirs up primitive instincts and brings "overwhelming
sexual images, powerful aggressive urges, angry and destructive
thoughts and impulses. Pluto grips the mind, and draws forth
images and thoughts that we have usually managed to keep hidden
or have previously denied were there". (The Gods Of Change).

As Kendrick gropes around for something more substantial than
men behaving badly, he'll feel the pressure to shake taboos and
be daring, provocative and rude, and he's got to risk making his
current readers uncomfortable. One way he could give Loaded more
impact would be to evoke Pluto as the planet of psychology and
poke around in the murky depths of what makes Loaded Man tick -
cute little motifs such as masturbation, castration, Oedipus
(mother-fxxxing). But however Kendrick deals with the scary issue
of the male shadow, expect controversy this summer.